I am a regular user of the Red Line and through my 3+ years of riding the line I have encountered but never actually questioned what exactly is the infamous Floating Slab Project. Though most of my commuting occurs on weekdays, I have ventured out in the world on the occasional weekend, only to be affected by closed stations and random shuttles.
The Floating Slab Project affects all stops from Harvard to Alewife, which accounts for 99% of my home turf (I know, I know, small much?). While the shuttle switch from Harvard to whatever my destination can be annoying, I have had a couple of occurrences in which that delay has turned into a cluster and almost caused major repercussions.
One incident in particular occurred this weekend: On the way home from changing my car's oil, I stopped at the Porter Square shopping center to grab a couple of things at CVS. I had also planned to go shopping at the H-Mart over in Central (seriously, go check out H-Mart if you're there! but that's a different story and I digress). Being the registered bad-ass that I am I decided for the first time to keep my car parked at the shopping center while I quickly took the T one stop over and bought a few items for an awesome Korean beef recipe I wanted to try. Of course karma got the best of me and I realized this "quick trip was going to take much longer. The shuttle bus I hopped on was stuck in terrible Mass ave traffic (20 min!) and then the T car at Harvard was very, very crowded. Fortunately I was with good company but I still regretted my decision and began to believe my car would be missing when I returned. The only city with parking rules more merciless than Cambridge can only be NYC.
Long story short, I got my groceries (quickest H-Mart shopping spree in history) and my car was still there! I thank the parking gods and promise to never ever pull that stunt again.
While I joke about the Floating Slab Project, I want to state it is for a good cause. I did some research about the when why and how on the project and retrieved this from the MBTA site:
The Red Line track from Harvard to Alewife sits on concrete slabs floating on rubber disks that absorb noise and vibration from trains. Years of water infiltration into the tunnel has resulted in corrosion and cracking that must be addressed in order to maintain safe and reliable Red Line service.
More information can be found following this link:
http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/t_projects/default.asp?id=22956
Oh, and for your own planning, here are some dates the project will affect the T:
- Saturday, April 29, and Sunday, April 30.
- Saturday, May 13, and Sunday, May 14.
I just found your blog while reading about the now defunct A-Line and it's PCC cars which are now used on the "M-Line". Apparently the A-Line only has like a meter or two of track left that they were too lazy to tear out.
ReplyDeleteAny way I love your blog and I hope you continue to post more.